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01: The Hard Things
Aaron and Darren jump into things as we officially launch The SaaS Venture. Our topic for the episode is "The Hard Things" and we each share one of the difficult things we accomplished in 2018.
The full show notes are below the helpful links.
Helpful links from the episode:
- GatherUp
- Whitespark
- Local Search Ranking Factors 2018
- LocalU Advanced conference
FULL SHOW NOTES
00:08 Aaron Weiche: Alright. Well I guess there's no going back. We are officially launching episode one, The Hard Things.
00:15 Speaker 2: Welcome to the SaaS Venture Podcast, sharing the adventure of leading and growing a bootstrap SaaS company. Hear the experiences, challenges, wins and losses shared in each episode. From Aaron Weiche of GatherUp and Darren Shaw of Whitespark. Let's go.
[music]
00:44 AW: Welcome to the SaaS Venture. I'm Aaron.
00:47 Darren Shaw: And I'm Darren.
00:49 AW: And we have finally decided to abandon or move away from all other ways of communication and get into this podcast thing and super excited to be bringing you guys through our world of trying to lead and manage and grow our SaaS companies, which both GatherUp and Whitespark are bootstrapped, and share just some of our day-to-day and month-to-month activities and what keeps us up at night, or everything else that goes in with it. And Darren I was trying to go through my head and figure out when was it... I know we were at a conference, but we were talking about doing a podcast together. It was some time ago, but I can't remember where it started.
01:34 DS: Yeah, you proposed the idea at MNSearch Summit. It was in the after-event at some pub that was right across the street from where the conference center was. And I was actually FaceTiming with my Violet, so having a little FaceTime with my daughter, and you actually came in and had some FaceTime with her, and then after that little call you're like, "We should do a podcast." And I was like, "Yeah, that sounds fun." And so we talked a little bit about it.
01:57 AW: That makes sense, where it was like some learning, some mental stimulation, being around smart people at a conference and then mix in a few beers. And that's when the big ideas happen.
02:09 DS: I think that's how every podcast starts really. [chuckle] A few beers are required.
02:14 AW: I don't know if I've heard anyone else document that so we might be the first to admit to it.
02:18 DS: Maybe, yeah. Yeah, I'm excited. This is gonna be good. There's so much to talk about and it's a new, I often talk about local search things, but this is talking about running the business, it's a new topic for me to share with the world, so I'm excited about it.
02:33 AW: Yeah, me too. Same thing, both of us speak at a ton of digital marketing and other types of conferences where we're asked to come in and give... For me, it's how to get more reviews and customer feedback and customer experience and it's so tactically driven a lot of the times. And I think both of us were really intrigued by this to share more of running a business, things unique to a bootstrap SaaS company, and all of those other aspects that we really don't get to talk and share a lot about, and it's also content that we're constantly seeking out ourselves through podcasts and articles and things like that.
03:07 DS: Yeah, and I think it's gonna be highly educational for me as well. Just getting a chance to chat with you on a regular basis, and then even thinking about these things like, "Okay, I wanna talk about this process that we're dealing with with our pricing page," or whatever and spending the time... Knowing that I'm gonna talk about it in the podcast, I'll put a little bit more effort into it. So [chuckle] I think it's gonna be great for helping drive my own personal development as well.
03:30 AW: Yep, I totally agree. So even if we only get two downloads out of the gate, we will chalk this up as a success, because you and I are talking on a pretty regular basis in order to make this happen.
03:42 DS: Yeah, definitely. [chuckle]
03:43 AW: There you go. There's a byproduct always of wins in everything you do.
03:46 DS: Absolutely.
03:47 AW: So just as we touched upon this first episode of The SaaS Venture, we wanted to look at the hard things, and this got me thinking. Just this last week, I put out a tweet because I was frustrated to myself. There's a couple internal projects that are just on my plate here at GatherUp and I started looking at all of the external things I do between speaking and selling and traveling and recruiting and hiring, as we're growing our team and all these other aspects. And probably one of the hardest things for me to do are internal projects, for me personally. Where it's working on a better intranet type system is one of the things on my plate. And I was feeling really frustrated because I was having a hard time carving out the time and being able to focus on it and that led me to thinking for our first episode topic and we're starting the year here recording this in January. We'll see when we get it edited and aired. But just reflecting back of like, "Well, what was my hardest thing in 2018?" And when I looked back at that, it was another internal project, it wasn't mine, just personally, but it was an internal project for our company and that was re-branding. We used to be called GetFiveStars for the first four and a half years of our company's life, and we re-branded to GatherUp on September 17th; it sticks out in my head very, very well.
05:13 DS: Why did you re-brand? What was the motivation to get a new brand name?
05:17 AW: Yeah, it's one of those multi-facets, like many fingers on the hand pointing in that direction. One, I can tell you from day one, I've been with the company for over three and a half years, is one of those things that just as like a gut check never aligned with me. I'd like to say that I'm kind of a brand marketing guy at heart, is just kinda in my core. And so, in my gut, it didn't sit right. Then we had just kind of other pieces where we had... Sometimes we would get someone who would tell us your name feels kind of spammy because it feels like I'm gonna buy five star reviews. If I purchase services from GetFiveStars, I will get five star reviews.
06:00 DS: Yep.
06:00 AW: As we went up channel in our customers and started having bigger customers, we had a couple that were using the company Five Stars, which is a loyalty. And they were like, "Man it's really hard to talk about you guys and talk about Five Stars in the same meeting. And he's just like, [chuckle] "Why don't you change your name?" That was kind of comical but I was kinda like, "Yeah, I kind of agree with you." And then just looking at longevity of things like we have GatherUp now, we just finally got word that we're officially registered, trade marked. That was never gonna happen with the word GetFiveStars and it was just kind of like GetFiveStars felt tactical where GatherUp feels like a brand. So it was kind of a collection of all of those things that really signaled to us that we need to start looking for a new name.
06:47 DS: That makes sense.
06:48 AW: Now the process of that, that's a pretty interesting process, right? There is kind of like all these little steps and hurdles. The first part is trying to figure out a name, that might be the hardest part, because so many other things after that, are steps and processes and things you document and checklist and whatever else, where the initially figuring it out is extremely difficult. At first we tried to do ...
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By Aaron Weiche
5
1010 ratings
Aaron and Darren jump into things as we officially launch The SaaS Venture. Our topic for the episode is "The Hard Things" and we each share one of the difficult things we accomplished in 2018.
The full show notes are below the helpful links.
Helpful links from the episode:
- GatherUp
- Whitespark
- Local Search Ranking Factors 2018
- LocalU Advanced conference
FULL SHOW NOTES
00:08 Aaron Weiche: Alright. Well I guess there's no going back. We are officially launching episode one, The Hard Things.
00:15 Speaker 2: Welcome to the SaaS Venture Podcast, sharing the adventure of leading and growing a bootstrap SaaS company. Hear the experiences, challenges, wins and losses shared in each episode. From Aaron Weiche of GatherUp and Darren Shaw of Whitespark. Let's go.
[music]
00:44 AW: Welcome to the SaaS Venture. I'm Aaron.
00:47 Darren Shaw: And I'm Darren.
00:49 AW: And we have finally decided to abandon or move away from all other ways of communication and get into this podcast thing and super excited to be bringing you guys through our world of trying to lead and manage and grow our SaaS companies, which both GatherUp and Whitespark are bootstrapped, and share just some of our day-to-day and month-to-month activities and what keeps us up at night, or everything else that goes in with it. And Darren I was trying to go through my head and figure out when was it... I know we were at a conference, but we were talking about doing a podcast together. It was some time ago, but I can't remember where it started.
01:34 DS: Yeah, you proposed the idea at MNSearch Summit. It was in the after-event at some pub that was right across the street from where the conference center was. And I was actually FaceTiming with my Violet, so having a little FaceTime with my daughter, and you actually came in and had some FaceTime with her, and then after that little call you're like, "We should do a podcast." And I was like, "Yeah, that sounds fun." And so we talked a little bit about it.
01:57 AW: That makes sense, where it was like some learning, some mental stimulation, being around smart people at a conference and then mix in a few beers. And that's when the big ideas happen.
02:09 DS: I think that's how every podcast starts really. [chuckle] A few beers are required.
02:14 AW: I don't know if I've heard anyone else document that so we might be the first to admit to it.
02:18 DS: Maybe, yeah. Yeah, I'm excited. This is gonna be good. There's so much to talk about and it's a new, I often talk about local search things, but this is talking about running the business, it's a new topic for me to share with the world, so I'm excited about it.
02:33 AW: Yeah, me too. Same thing, both of us speak at a ton of digital marketing and other types of conferences where we're asked to come in and give... For me, it's how to get more reviews and customer feedback and customer experience and it's so tactically driven a lot of the times. And I think both of us were really intrigued by this to share more of running a business, things unique to a bootstrap SaaS company, and all of those other aspects that we really don't get to talk and share a lot about, and it's also content that we're constantly seeking out ourselves through podcasts and articles and things like that.
03:07 DS: Yeah, and I think it's gonna be highly educational for me as well. Just getting a chance to chat with you on a regular basis, and then even thinking about these things like, "Okay, I wanna talk about this process that we're dealing with with our pricing page," or whatever and spending the time... Knowing that I'm gonna talk about it in the podcast, I'll put a little bit more effort into it. So [chuckle] I think it's gonna be great for helping drive my own personal development as well.
03:30 AW: Yep, I totally agree. So even if we only get two downloads out of the gate, we will chalk this up as a success, because you and I are talking on a pretty regular basis in order to make this happen.
03:42 DS: Yeah, definitely. [chuckle]
03:43 AW: There you go. There's a byproduct always of wins in everything you do.
03:46 DS: Absolutely.
03:47 AW: So just as we touched upon this first episode of The SaaS Venture, we wanted to look at the hard things, and this got me thinking. Just this last week, I put out a tweet because I was frustrated to myself. There's a couple internal projects that are just on my plate here at GatherUp and I started looking at all of the external things I do between speaking and selling and traveling and recruiting and hiring, as we're growing our team and all these other aspects. And probably one of the hardest things for me to do are internal projects, for me personally. Where it's working on a better intranet type system is one of the things on my plate. And I was feeling really frustrated because I was having a hard time carving out the time and being able to focus on it and that led me to thinking for our first episode topic and we're starting the year here recording this in January. We'll see when we get it edited and aired. But just reflecting back of like, "Well, what was my hardest thing in 2018?" And when I looked back at that, it was another internal project, it wasn't mine, just personally, but it was an internal project for our company and that was re-branding. We used to be called GetFiveStars for the first four and a half years of our company's life, and we re-branded to GatherUp on September 17th; it sticks out in my head very, very well.
05:13 DS: Why did you re-brand? What was the motivation to get a new brand name?
05:17 AW: Yeah, it's one of those multi-facets, like many fingers on the hand pointing in that direction. One, I can tell you from day one, I've been with the company for over three and a half years, is one of those things that just as like a gut check never aligned with me. I'd like to say that I'm kind of a brand marketing guy at heart, is just kinda in my core. And so, in my gut, it didn't sit right. Then we had just kind of other pieces where we had... Sometimes we would get someone who would tell us your name feels kind of spammy because it feels like I'm gonna buy five star reviews. If I purchase services from GetFiveStars, I will get five star reviews.
06:00 DS: Yep.
06:00 AW: As we went up channel in our customers and started having bigger customers, we had a couple that were using the company Five Stars, which is a loyalty. And they were like, "Man it's really hard to talk about you guys and talk about Five Stars in the same meeting. And he's just like, [chuckle] "Why don't you change your name?" That was kind of comical but I was kinda like, "Yeah, I kind of agree with you." And then just looking at longevity of things like we have GatherUp now, we just finally got word that we're officially registered, trade marked. That was never gonna happen with the word GetFiveStars and it was just kind of like GetFiveStars felt tactical where GatherUp feels like a brand. So it was kind of a collection of all of those things that really signaled to us that we need to start looking for a new name.
06:47 DS: That makes sense.
06:48 AW: Now the process of that, that's a pretty interesting process, right? There is kind of like all these little steps and hurdles. The first part is trying to figure out a name, that might be the hardest part, because so many other things after that, are steps and processes and things you document and checklist and whatever else, where the initially figuring it out is extremely difficult. At first we tried to do ...